Cinnia rose and urged Louvaen up with her. “Come on. We’ll go downstairs, treat those cuts and get your hands wrapped. No spinning for you the next few days. You’ll have to take up the fine arts of pacing and sniveling with me.”
Clarimond manned the kitchens for the morning. “Mam is upstairs tending to Sir Gavin.” She winced at Louvaen’s hands. “I’ll heat water for you, mistress, and bring honey and bandages.”
An hour later, Louvaen held up hands slathered in honey and wrapped in linen bandages. She turned to Cinnia, noting the dark circles under the girl’s eyes, her bedraggled braid and wrinkled clothing. She wasn’t the only one who didn’t sleep the previous night. “I can manage cleaning my teeth, but you’ll have to...” A tormented scream barreled up from below, vibrating the floor beneath their feet. Louvaen closed her eyes for a moment before opening them again to Cinnia’s ashen features. “...lace me once I change clothes,” she continued in a hollow voice.
“He sounds so much worse than last time.” Cinnia grabbed frantically for the cup an equally pale Clarimond handed her and downed the drink. “I wish we had something stronger than the ale.”
“How is Gavin?” Louvaen was almost afraid to ask. This was the first time in the past twenty-four hours she’d seen Cinnia dry-eyed. She prayed her question wouldn’t start another crying jag. She was too preoccupied with the tenant in the well room cell to be much comfort to her sister at the moment.
“Not suffering like his father, thank the gods.” Cinnia clapped a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, Lou. I don’t mean I’m glad de Sauveterre is hurting. I’m just saying...”
Louvaen chucked her lightly under the chin. “Don’t be a goose. I know what you meant.” She rose, thanked Clarimond for her physicking and refused the offer of breakfast. Her stomach was knotted worse than her hair. If she tried to eat, she feared she’d retch. She nudged Cinnia. “Come with me. I have to dress and need your help. You could use a little tidying yourself.”
They readied themselves for the day, serenaded by a cacophony of tortured cries. The flux had swelled and would continue to rise for the next few days before receding, turning Gavin into a bed-ridden invalid and his father into a bestial revenant. Louvaen wondered if by the end of the tide, they might all join Ballard in his madness. She left Cinnia at Gavin’s door, wringing from her the promise that she’d fetch Louvaen if she needed her.
Cinnia paused with her hand on the latch. “Where will you be?”
“Cleaning the buttery.” Louvaen stared at her sister, daring her to argue.
The girl gazed at her in silence for a moment. “Be careful, Lou,” she said and slipped into the chamber where Gavin rested and Magda comforted him.
Louvaen waited outside, listening to the murmur of voices—Gavin’s weak and raspy, Cinnia’s falsely cheerful. She shook her head and went downstairs, never stopping for broom or mop in the kitchen. The door between the buttery and the well room was closed and barred. Beyond the barrier of wood all was silent. She sat down on one side of the top most step, arranged her skirts and leaned back against the wall to wait. She did as Ballard asked and stayed out of the well room, but she’d keep vigilance here, out of sight. He might not see or hear her, but she’d be there just the same.
She sat for hours, sometimes smothered by the quiet, other times with her bandaged hands over her ears as Ballard threatened to bring the roof down. The guttural howls were terrible, testament to his assertions that he wasn’t human during the flux. The whimpers were worse—broken noises as if the pain were so bad, it hurt too much to scream. Twice, Louvaen stood up and prepared to march down the stairs, throw the door wide and check his cell. Only her promise to leave him some illusion of gravitas stopped her. She plopped back down on the step, propped her elbows on her knees and covered her face with her hands.
“If you sit there much longer, your backside will freeze to the step.”
Louvaen looked up and scooted over to give Ambrose room beside her. He settled his robes around him and tucked his hands into his voluminous sleeves for warmth. “I thought I might find you here.”
She shrugged. “Where else would I be?”
“With your sister.”
“I was with her earlier. She doesn’t need my company at the moment.”
His spectacles reflected back her features, effectively hiding his expression as he scrutinized her. “What happened to your hands?”
She almost tossed off a flippant response, some meaningless excuse about clumsiness and distraction. She discarded the notion. Ambrose might not have sought her out specifically, but he sat beside her holding a conversation which didn’t involve the exchange of barbed remarks. Maybe if she revealed something in good faith, he might return the favor and tell her of the curse that burdened the de Sauveterre men.
She held out her hands as if to admire Clarimond’s handiwork. “As much as I’d like to, I can’t always deny my mother’s legacy. When I’m upset, I spin.”
One of his eyebrows rose to crinkle his forehead, and his lips twitched. “That’s surprisingly harmless. I’d imagine you preferred pitchforking people.”
Louvaen scowled. Had Cinnia toldeveryonethe Farmer Toddle story? “I do that for sport,” she snapped. She ignored his chuckle. “Cinnia once mentioned that our father joked I could spin straw into gold. I haven’t mastered such a profitable skill yet, but if I’m angry enough, or grieving, I can spin flax and wool into wire.” She tucked her hands into her lap. “Makes a bit of a mess.”
Ambrose stared at her as if she’d just transformed into a winged cat. “Well, well. Who knew? Your magic comes through when you lower your guard.”
She nodded. “I spun baskets of wire after Thomas died and wore bandages on my hands for weeks.”
“Why do you hate magic so much?”
“You ask me that when the roses outside will shred a man to bloody bits, and your lord screams his agony while chained to a wall?”
“Not all magic is so pernicious, mistress. Don’t play the hoddypeak with me. You know it’s true.”
Louvaen’s jaw dropped. Instead of thinking she was a dimwitted turnip, he now admonished her for acting like one. They’d come a long way in the space of a few moments. He still hadn’t revealed a thing about the curse, and here she was spilling more of her family history to him. If he tried to get away with another load of innuendo and ambiguous hints, she’d kill him.
“When Abigail—Cinnia’s mother—lay dying, my father called in every hedgehag and conjurer to save her. Those with a true skill were honest most times and told him there was nothing to be done. The others though—they poured every kind of vile nostrum and slipper-sauce down her throat, chanted nonsensical spells over her, burned her skin with hot spoons and bled her blue to release the demons fighting for control of her spirit. I don’t know which killed her first, her sickness or their cures.”
